hat [now] ART (138)
Among Feldman fans these days, I imagine I’m fairly typical, having only really discovered the great composer’s work after he died in 1987 when labels like Hat, Bridge and Mode began releasing an abundance of albums. Not having experienced his oeuvre as it was developing, I naturally gravitated to the amazing later works, the incredibly beautiful solo piano pieces like “For Bunita Marcus” and “Palais de Mari” as well as the chamber ensemble works and his “opera”, “Neither”. Hearing his early piano pieces, therefore, can be a bit unsettling, creating a sense of impatience, as though Feldman should have somehow known, in the mid 50s, what he’d be producing twenty years hence and get a move on already. But, depending on the pianist, these pieces often retain a trace of the academic serialism that was pervasive in the late 40s, early 50s New York atmosphere and, historically accurate as it may be, I hear Feldman being corralled in by this aura, seeking a way out that, ultimately, had to do with the utilization of space and silence and the subtle and intricate weave of poetically similar elements.
John Tilbury, in his masterful four-disc set of the complete Feldman solo piano works (on London Hall) had come the closest to tying these early pieces conceptually to the later epics, but here, Steffen Schleiermacher actually does him one better. A simple comparison of the track times shows Schleiermacher taking things at an even more slowed down pace, drawing out the silences and holding some notes to better establish the sort of dream-space that Feldman would limn so wonderfully in upcoming years. Pieces like “Intermission VI” and “Last Pieces III” are attenuated so delicately as to all but effervesce into the air. Each track is lovingly framed, hanging like jeweled pendants. I still think that, generally, Tilbury’s touch, sense of poetry and divine placement of notes in space is unparalleled and that he remains Feldman’s finest interpreter, but with regard to these works, composed between 1950 and 1964, he has perhaps met his match. Even if it’s the later masterworks that really draw your awe and admiration, any Feldman aficionado owes it to him or herself to hear his roots. This disc may be the single best place to start.
Thanks for the review, Brian. I have two questions.
First, what pieces are included on the disc(s)? Second, since most of what I've heard of Feldman's early piano music has been care of his buddy David Tudor, can you compare Schliermacher performances with any of those? Thanks.
Posted by: Walto at August 19, 2003 11:00 AMWalt, unfortunately (real unfortunately!), I've never heard the Tudor performances. Are they currently available? Aside from the Tilbury, I have recordings of most of the same piece by Aki Takahashi, which I found a little on the dry side.
The pieces included are: Two Intermissions, the Six Piano Pieces (1952-64), Two Intermissions (V & VI), Three Pieces I-III, and the Last Pieces I-IV.
Posted by: Brian at August 19, 2003 3:13 PMSorry not to have responded sooner: I've been out of town.
I don't think I've seen the Tudor recordings on CD, but I'm not a serious collector/discographer type.
I have this niggling sense, however, that maybe one should give a listen to what may well be the most famous performances of Feldman's piano music (many libraries definitely have them), before saying stuff like: "...Tilbury's touch, sense of poetry and divine placement of notes in space is unparalleled and...he remains Feldman's finest interpreter." Maybe they're just the best ones you've heard?
(BTW, haven't there been some Oppens recordings of Feldman's piano works, too?)
Posted by: Walto at August 22, 2003 4:36 AMDoing a brief googling, the only Tudor recordings of Feldman I could find are of the early pieces (more or less as above) on CRI. There's a chamber recording from 1992 that includes Tudor also though I'm not sure of the wider context. I don't know that he ever recorded (performed?) the larger scale solo pieces. Anyone?
I've never heard or seen any Oppens recordings of Feldman (unless I'm overtl forgetting something) although, from the large amount of her work I _have_ heard, it doesn't strike me as though she'd be particularly well-suited for him. I like her very much, to be sure, but find her most appealing in more rugged environs, like Rzewskis' 'El Peublo Unido....'.
Posted by: Brian at August 22, 2003 6:00 AMChecking further, I see Oppens on one or two recordings that include works by Feldman, though I can't tell whether she plays on his pieces. Looks like she might have performed 'Violin and Piano' with Zukovsky and maybe particpated in some student recordings (at CUNY Buffalo?).
Posted by: Brian at August 22, 2003 6:04 AMThe Tudor/Feldman releases I know have been on Columbia (and, more cheaply) Odyssey. I don't know if those are the same performances as on CRI (which I haven't heard).
Posted by: walto at August 22, 2003 6:56 AM"... Zukovsky..."
Paul Zukofsky? Poet Louis Zukofsky's son?
If so, and in case you have not read it, check out the elder Z.'s novel, LITTLE.
Sorry--Zukofsky. Didn't know about his parentage. I think I've only actually seen him perform once, in the BAM production of Einstein on the Beach in 1987 or so. What's "Little" like?
Posted by: Brian at August 22, 2003 8:59 AM"What's 'Little' like?"
I'm quite fond of it. Whimsical, at times quite strange, but never condescending to its young protagonist.
Posted by: Joe Milazzo at August 22, 2003 9:21 AMFWIW, there's what seems like a pretty thorough and accurate Feldman site here:
http://www.cnvill.demon.co.uk/mfhome.htm
Posted by: Jon Abbey at August 23, 2003 5:29 PMThat's a nice site, but the discographies don't give the performers. One thing the site does have, though is some sort of a BBS, and I found this there, by someone named Susan Lancaster:
************************************************
"Inspired by Dirk Moelants' interesting essay "What is slow?" (link on
Chris Villars' Feldman links page) and noticing that the new recording
of "Last Pieces" by Stephane Ginsburgh is twice as long as previous CD
recordings, I decided to investigate!
"Last Pieces" has 4 sctions marked simply Slow, Fast, Very Slow and Very
Fast respectively. The first 3 sections can be regarded as a succession
of vertical "events" (chords). Following Moelants, I left out the 4th
movement because in it the two hands are explicitly de-coupled and also
because many pauses are notated which subvert simplistic attempts (like
this one - not Moelants!) to define the tempo.
Being unable to measure "inter onset intervals" ala Moelants, I just
divided the number of vertical events per section (ignoring grace notes)
into the section duration to get the average time per event for each
section. My results for the 3 CD recordings - John Tilbury (T), Steffen
Schleiermacher (S) and Stephane Ginsburgh (G) are:
AVERAGE SECONDS PER EVENT
Section T S G
1: Slow 4.14 5.67 5.44
2: Fast 0.99 1.17 3.27
3: V. Slow 5.23 5.80 7.25
T's and S's performances are very similar: Both make a great distinction
between Slow and Fast, both take Fast at about 1 second per event and
both make much less distinction (almost no distinction in S's case)
between Slow and V. Slow."
G's perforamce is very different: His inital Slow matches the others,
but his Fast and V. Slow are much slower than theirs. His tempos are a
much more regularly graded sequence than the others. He makes a roughly
equal distinction between Fast/Slow and Slow/V. Slow (about 2 seconds
per event). It's a very nice interpretation I think, emphasising again
the importance of having a variety of recordings available, as several
others having indicated recently on this list.
Susan L (Hoping my calculations are correct!)
************************************************
Ms. Lancaster also took a survey of the list members views regarding their favorite Feldman recordings. Here are her results:
*************************************************
"Hi Everyone,
19 people sent in their 5 recommended CDs. Three of
these sent in more than 5 recommendations - I used
only the first 5. I person included 2 LPs - I left
these off the list. That made a total of 93 votes,
which were distributed as shown below (also attached
in a .txt file for those whose email software
re-aligns the text format).
Assuming 19 is 10% or more of the list membership,
this result could be claimed as representative of the
Why.Patterns list, and those CDs being recommended by
more than 10% of respondents (i.e. getting 2 or more
votes) could be called "Why.Patterns recommended
Feldman CDs". One way to present the list would be as
shown in the results (i.e. including the numbers of
votes) so that relative ranking can be seen. I'm sure
this could prove to be a useful list for anyone
wanting to expand their Feldman collection (or start
one).
Interesting to see just how popular the
Takahashi/Kronos "Piano and String Quartet" CD is -
with over half of respondents recommending it and it
getting almost twice as many recommendations as any
other!
Also, I couldn't help noticing in adding up the list
just how many works from Feldman's late period were
included. The top 7 on the list (all those with 4 or
more votes) are all late period works! And around 75%
of all recommendations were for late period works!
Susan L
LIST OF RESULTS:
Description
Score
Piano and String Quartet (Takahashi/Kronos - Nonesuch)
11
String Quartet II (Ives Ensemble - Hat Hut)
6
Violin and String Quartet (Fong/Rangzen - Ogreogress
productions) 6
Coptic Light etc (Tilson Thomas - Argo)
5
Why Patterns?/Crippled Symmetry
(Blum/Vigeland/Williams - Hat Hut) 5
Triadic Memories (Goldstein - Offseason Productions)
5
For Philip Guston (Blum/Vigeland/Williams - Hat Hut)
4
Untitled Composition (Kees/Berman - Attacca)
3
All Piano (Tilbury - Londonhall)
3
Crippled Symmetry (California EAR Unit - Bridge)
3
The Ecstasy of the Moment (Barton Workshop - Etcetera)
3
Routine Investigations (Ensemble Recherche -
Montaigne) 3
String Quartet 1 (Koch International)
2
... And Orchestra (Hans Zender et al - CPO)
2
Neither (Hat Hut)
2
Rothko Chapel/Why Patterns? (California EAR Unit - New
Albion) 2
Triadic Memories (Takahashi - ALM)
2
For Philip Guston (California EAR Unit - Bridge)
2
Turfan Fragments/For Samuel Beckett (SEM Ensemble -Dog
W/A Bone) 2
For Samuel Beckett (Mosko - Newport Classic)
2
Patterns in a Chromatic Field (Shroeder/de Saram - Hat
Hut) 2
For John Cage (Ives Ensemble - Hat Hut)
1
For Samuel Beckett (Ensemble Modern - Hat Hut)
1
Rothko Chapel (Klangforum Wien - Col Legno)
1
For Samuel Beckett (CPO)
1
Atlantis etc (Hat Hut)
1
Neither (Hoffmann/Ryan - Col Legno)
1
Trio (Radcke/Schloemann/Breier - NCA)
1
Three Voices (La Barbara - New Albion)
1
Music for Two Pianos (Alice)
1
Complete works for Violin and Piano (Sabat/Clarke -
Mode) 1
Piano Pieces for More Than 2 Hands (Bureau de
Pianistes - Sub Rosa) 1
For John Cage (Zukofsky/Oppens - CP2)
1
For John Cage (Takahashi/Toyoshima - ALM)
1
For Christian Wolff (Blum/Vigeland - Hat Hut)
1
The Viola in My Life etc (Feldman et al - CRI)
1
Indeterminate Music (Turfan Ensemble - Mode)
1
Aki Takahashi plays Morton Feldman (Mode)
1
For Bunita Marcus (Kleeb - Hat Hut)"
1
"That's a nice site, but the discographies don't give the performers."
not true, click on the "List of Works Recorded on LP" one.
that Nonseuch record isn't very exciting. it goes again to show you how important distribution is, as I'm sure it's infinitely better distributed than almost every other record in that list.
Posted by: Jon Abbey at August 28, 2003 11:21 AMYou're right, Jon: that info is there. I looked at the other two links, assuming they'd have more info than the "lists." Wrong!
Posted by: walto at August 28, 2003 12:37 PMBTW, I think I'd find it very hard to pick my own faves. I love that old Odyssey LP to death, but it's scratched up something fierce. I also love my "Viola of My Life" LP. "Coptic Light" is my favorite orchestral recording of a work by F: some of the older ones I've heard don't seem like they're played very well. The Tilbury is great, though sometimes I think he could be a bit gentler and slower.
So much of his stuff is sooooo beautiful.
Posted by: walto at August 28, 2003 12:44 PMLessee, I have 19 Feldman discs, so I'm not a completist (though I'm working on it), but if I had to pick five favorites of what I have and didn't repeat individual pieces, they might be:
All Piano (Tilbury/London Hall)
For Philip Guston (Bridge)
Why Patterns?/Crippled Symmetry (hat)
The Viola in My Life (CRI)
For Samuel Beckett (hat)
I have 27 of his releases, and outside of the Tilbury and the Hat For Bunita Marcus, I've always had a soft spot for the Hat recording of Patterns in a Chromatic Field. I'm also a fan of the recent 4 CD second string quartet on Hat, although I haven't quite listened to it in one sitting yet.
Posted by: Jon Abbey at August 28, 2003 7:58 PMBased on the two preceding posts, I don't know if one should be counting discs or releases--especially since quite a bit of what I have of Feldman consists of neither (being tapes of individual works).
I can see from the above-cited discography, however, that I have far fewer than the 130 CD releases mentioned as having Feldman pieces on them. In fact, there are a whole lot of them I didn't know about! I Wonder how many are actually available today. (Most of the OTP LPs are incredibly hard to find: I tried to replace my old Odyssey for many years before finally bagging it. The Mondriaan performance of "Three Pieces for String Quartet" on CD seems to me much worse than the LP version....but alas.)
Posted by: walto at August 29, 2003 6:45 AMI have one Feldman recording: VIOLIN & STRING QUARTET on HatNow & it's my favorite.
Posted by: derek at August 29, 2003 8:01 AMYeah, but you told me that that was the one you liked the least, too!
Posted by: walto at August 29, 2003 8:31 AMOne I have not yet seen mentioned is:
DURATIONS I - V [1960 - 1962] (Ensemble Avantgarde; 1994)
COPTIC LIGHT [1986] (Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, conducted by Michael Morgan; 1994)
CPO 999189
A fascinating pairing of older, overtly aleatoric and newer, much more tighly controlled works. It is the Feldman disc I return to most often.
And though it may mark me as terribly square, I still really enjoy the Kronos Quartet / Aki Takahashi recording of PIANO AND STRING QUARTET [1985].
Posted by: Joe Milazzo at August 29, 2003 8:36 AMCan anyone tell me how I can get a copy of the following CD please:
FELDMAN: Triadic Memories - Goldstein (Offseason Productions 226)
http://www.wfu.edu/users/louieg/tmnote.htm
Which means you should be able to get it through Anomalous, if Eric Lanzillotta's still in business.
Anomalous has been out of business as a distributor for over a year now.
Posted by: Jon Abbey at December 4, 2004 12:07 PMI think you can find it on Verge music website:
http://www.vergemusic.com/
Jon Abbey wrote:
"that Nonseuch record isn't very exciting. "
This is the cd that got me into Feldman as I was pretty much buying Kronos CDs as I found them (no complaints from me, introduced me to tons of new composers) Anyway I do like this piece, what is the recommended performance? Also chalk me up as another vote for the Tilbury set. We should have flooded the Feldman sites poll ;)
Posted by: hatta at December 4, 2004 2:27 PM"Anyway I do like this piece, what is the recommended performance?"
the only other recording of it is on Hat Art, which I prefer. but I think the Nonesuch disc is OK also, I was just commenting on why I thought it led the polls.
Posted by: Jon Abbey at December 4, 2004 3:09 PMI have most of the Feldman recordings and the one I listen to the most is For Bunita Marcus (Hildegard Kleeb, on Hat). I also like
Palais de Mari (Marianne Schroeder, from Works for Piano, also on Hat)
For Philip Guston (Bridge)
Rothko Chapel(New Albion)
Crippled Symmetry (Bridge)
String Quartet II (Hat, not Mode)
Piano and String Quartet (both Nonesuch and Hat)
For John Cage (Hat)
Triadic Memories (Goldstein, Offseason)
Listening to Feldman requires a great time commitment, and I feel like I'm just beginning to comprehend his work, and the nuances of the different perfomances. My favorites will probably change with time.
Tadik's Patterns in a Chromatic Field is an odd one...very active and spiky, and unlike anything else I've heard of his. I haven't heard the version on Hat. I also haven't heard the Schleiermeicher version of the early works, but his 10-volume set of interpretations of Cage is truly remarkable.
Posted by: Dan Siedler at December 5, 2004 5:38 PM"DURATIONS I - V [1960 - 1962] (Ensemble Avantgarde; 1994)
COPTIC LIGHT [1986] (Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, conducted by Michael Morgan; 1994)
A fascinating pairing of older, overtly aleatoric and newer, much more tighly controlled works. It is the Feldman disc I return to most often."
The same here. Durations sound for me incredibly beautiful. Barton's Workshop perfomance of it too.
Tudor is listed among performers on this cd "Morton Feldman (Feldman, Tudor, Tilbury, Cardew, Blum) (rz 1010)" (i'm not sure if it's the same disc you're talking about)
I've been collecting Feldman on p2p for about 2 months and i could say that discography on "his" site is incomplete (but maybe i look at wrong place too, actually i've never read that remark about 130 cds featuring Feldmans works)
Posted by: dolzenko at December 17, 2004 10:22 AMIntermission 5, 3, Piano Piece 1956 A, B are performed by Tudor on this "rz 1010" disc
Posted by: dolzenko at December 17, 2004 10:28 AMGot this a few days ago in the mail.
Perhaps not as striking as Patterns in a Chromatic Field but still, some incredible music here.
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